He shaped the development of psychiatry in Germany: Hanns Hippius, who was director of the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Munich’s Nussbaumstrasse for almost 25 years, died on Saturday at the age of 96. The physician spent his old age in Chiemgau.
Hanns Hippius was born on April 18, 1925 in Mühlhausen / Thuringia. As an 18-year-old he had to go to war and served two years in the navy before he was taken prisoner by the English and then by the United States. Only then did he study medicine and chemistry at the Universities of Freiburg / Breisgau, Marburg / Lahn and the Free University (FU) Berlin. He became a specialist in neurology and laboratory medicine.
Chemistry, medicine and his interest in psychiatry – this connection led him early on to research neurological and biochemical processes in mental illnesses. After his habilitation he became a professor in Berlin, in 1971 he took over the management of the psychiatric clinic at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Nussbaumstrasse.
Famous predecessors had already taught there – Emil Kraepelin or Alois Alzheimer – but until the 1960s, psychiatric clinics were primarily custody facilities with cots and compulsory cures. That only changed in the 1970s with the reform movement that encompassed many areas of society. Hanns Hippius played a key role in the psychiatry enquete in the Bundestag in 1975. He also made sure that the nursing staff was specially trained.
His specialty was the development of new psychotropic drugs with few side effects. At the same time, the development of psychotherapy was close to his heart, and he set up professorships for forensic psychiatry and psychosomatics. The previous mental hospital was divided into a psychiatric and a neurological part. Hippius later played a decisive role in setting up a separate child and adolescent psychiatry in Munich. The widely honored physician was a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, honorary member of many specialist societies and author of numerous standard works. “Even in old age he took part in all current developments. We will miss him as a person, the conversations with him and his always valuable advice from his long experience,” says Oliver Pogarell, deputy director of the clinic in Nussbaumstrasse. As a teacher, he was strict but extremely human, say former students. Many of them later became clinic directors themselves. “He was a great role model for all of us,” says Reinhard Steinberg, who later became medical director at the Palatinate Clinic, “and he always had an open ear for his patients.” Because Hippius, father of four children, was an avid skier, he founded an annual ski meeting with the professor of the University of Vienna, which is still taking place today. If you want to ride, you have to report on your latest research.
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